Your vote is pointless. The party you’re rallying behind is doomed to fail. The election has already been decided, and not in your favour. Well, unless you’re a Tory, that is. Which, of course, is perfectly possible and reasonable; unlike the particularly spiteful campaign that has sneaked into Manchester Pride over the last few years,… Read More

The ability for you, me, and the guy down the street to communicate with absolutely anybody else across the world was the big sales pitch the internet showed up to town with when I was growing up. Before “memes”, before social media, before even pornography took hold, the idea of talking to people they’d never… Read More

I remember having a conversation with an ex many years ago about how our music tastes were starting to diverge. Having once listened to largely the same crop of artists, YouTube, we concluded, was the cause of our differing paths. At the time, the video network was just beginning to push recommendations based on your… Read More

In just a couple of days, the UK will vote to leave the EU. That’s how things appear as I sit here typing now, ironically enough in a chain coffee shop staffed by baristas with accents of all kinds, European and otherwise. Polls are unreliable, but there’s a definite tone to the conversation I’m seeing… Read More

I love being able to pick my own office for the day. In a city as changing and expansive as Manchester, it’s possible to work out of scores of different “offices” – or coffee shops, as regular folk call them – and having worked freelance within games journalism for the best part of the last… Read More

In some ways, the revelation that Pep Guardiola is to take over as manager of Manchester City in the coming summer is the most unsurprising news of the football season. As the club admitted in its press statement yesterday, City have been chasing the current Bayern Munich manager since 2012 and, arguably, this is the… Read More

I’ve never been a fan of labels when it comes to sexuality. I’ve always said that, despite the fact being gay would never be one of the first things I mention about myself when I meet someone new, if asked to detail the lay of the land in my bedroom I identify as homosexual, purely… Read More

“I’d like to introduce you to my boyfriend,” opened an unknown and entirely unsolicited contact to me via popular gay dating app Scruff last week. “I could invite you round to our place, get the two of you talking, and then leave. I really like the idea of my boyfriend cheating on me, you see.”… Read More

What’s in a name? Or, rather, what’s in a number? When Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 to the world back in 2014, arguably the feature that got the most press wasn’t the supposed ‘return’ of the Start button, nor the phasing back of Metro apps so open maligned by tech journalists throughout Windows 8’s existence. No,… Read More